and can alert you instantly to an unusual charge. so you can be a member of a more secure world. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. legal marijuana comes to colorado. where is it going next? much of the country's locked in a deep freeze this sunday morning. but if there is one thing we're learning, it is that things are always changing, including some things that many people thought would never change. prohibition against pot has ended in colorado. that state became the first in the country this week to legalize the sale of marijuana for recreational use. so what happens next in the movement to make marijuana legal everywhere? the new york mayor bill de blasio, the definition of a new

liberal, he was sworn into office this week by a man who a generation ago famously declared the era of big government is over. president bill clinton. so what exactly does it mean to be a liberal these days? and as an added challenge, can you define it in four words? that's ahead. also, the most prominent editorial board in the country started off the year by asking for some form of clemency for edward snowden. is there any reason to think president obama would want to green leniency to someone who stole countless secret highly cl classified documents? we'll get to that. and president obama, what might he be watching on his flight home? reporters spotted "madmen" dvds on his plane. stick around for that. but, first, barack obama is a

social media savvy president. the idea for his january 2011 town hall was pretty simple. went like this. people would submit questions on youtube and the rest of america would get to vote on those questions. what would be asked to the president. but when it came time to answer them, the president didn't end up responding to the most popular questions. he answered what his team described as, quote, a selection of them. and there was a reason for this. the reason why obama didn't want strict majority rule when it came to question selection for his town hall. because when all the votes were counted up, 99 of the top 100 questions were about the same politically sensitive subject. marijuana and the war on drugs. and there were plenty of pot questions in the second 100 too. as huffington post pointed out, the president was barraged with questions on youtube about legalizing pot. this wasn't the first time the white house solicited questions on the internet. nor was it the first time they were bombarded with pot

questions. >> there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high. and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation. and i don't know what this says about the online audience, but the answer is no, i don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy. so, all right. >> legalizing marijuana for recreational use has been a top priority for pot aficionados and criminal justice reformers for a while. for years now, they have been doing a lot more than just submitting questions about it. not just pushing for medical marijuana to help ease the symptoms of those with debilitating illnesses, their goal is to legalize and regulate the purchase of pot by anybody of age. to make that perfectly legal. and just last year, 2012, they had their biggest breakthrough

ever. placing legalization refer da on three state ballots and prevailing in two. in washington, the measure passed with 55% of the vote. and in colorado, true swing state, maybe the biggest swing state we have out there, the referendum got more votes last november than president obama did. but election night was only the first step out there. proponents of legalization in these states had won over the voters, but they still had to win over the obama administration. marijuana is still illegal under federal law. unclear how the department of justice would react. they would crack down on medicinal marijuana dispensaries in the past. and colorado's democratic governor deposed legalization, he was quick to release the statement that declared, quote, don't break out the cheetos or the goldfish too quickly. but in a boon to the snack food

industry, the obama administration announced they would not be interseeding in colorado or washington and that for the time being they would be monitoring implementation to see if the states were safely regulating sales. which made this a very special new year for all the many people who lined up outside of colorado's brand-new dispensaries, waiting to legally purchase marijuana for their own recreational use. some shops had to close early because they ran out of supply. under the new law, adults over 21 can buy up to an ounce of marijuana if they're in-state residents. the law is regulating marijuana is based on how the state controls alcohol. >> i was hoping they would have a sampler pack or something. >> my plans are just basically to pick up a quarter bag and go home, smoke some weed, watch some stupid movies and play some video games. >> i think it is tremendously huge, just like prohibition back

in the day. >> there is a lot of excitement in places like denver and mountain ski towns, not all of colorado is excited about the new law. communities have the option of deciding not to allow the marijuana shops if they want. many places like conservative greeley in colorado springs, home to the socially conservative group focus on the family, they said no thank you. but despite pockets of resistance, marijuana legalization seems to have momentum. last year for first time in history a majority of americans said they do support legalizing it. the senate held its first ever hearing on legalization in september. new york times reported yesterday that new york governor andrew cuomo, when asked an executive action this week. the ballot initiatives and legislative efforts to expand recreational marijuana are advancing in states like alaska, oregon and california, which adds to the 21 states and the district of columbia where medical marijuana is already legal. so it looks like in addition to

red states and blue states, maybe heading toward a collection of green states. and while maybe some not so green states as well. but even if more states legalize marijuana, what will happen after obama leaves office, there is a new administration and a new justice department to enforce the federal drug laws that are still on the books. well, to talk about all of this, i want to bring in alan st. pierre, executive director of the national organization for the reform of marijuana laws, political comedian and liberal commentator john fuguelesong, jeffrey reynolds, and liz woodstead, co-creator of the daily show and author of the book "liz free or die," great title. thank you all for joining us. i guess we'll start, just on colorado, what exactly is happening out there and just to make this clear for everybody what the rules are, so we said in the introduction, you can boy up to one ounce, if you're a resident of the state of

california at one of the dispensaries. i think it is a quarter of an ounce if you're an out of state resident. there is a dispute about where people can -- once they buy it, where they can use it. if you live snin the state, you can go to your home. but not a public place. if you're in new york and fly out to colorado and buy it, no one is sure where you can use it. this is a border state, wyoming, a tweet that i guess was the wyoming highway department put out as soon as the new year rolled around. if we can put that up. they're warning, do not bring your colorado purchased marijuana into wyoming. so there is some issues here. but, just in general, for your group, this is something you've been involved with for a while, this seems like a landmark moment for you. >> shutly. wh when the voters voted for this, we knew the rubicon was crossed but to see people line up and purchase the marijuana have and the federal government allow it,

we largely on our tv saw the end of prohibition this past week. >> what is the -- how big a test, i guess, the question is then is colorado. is there potential something could go wrong here, that might stall the momentum? >> much like the aca rollout, it is inevitable, something will go wrong, someone will smack their car into a bush and that will be used as a scalp to say this was wrong all along. but fact is this is capitalism, regulated capitalism, this is democracy, this is conservative values. washington grew hemp. jefferson grew hemp. you could pay your taxes for over 200 years in this country from industrial hemp. the ama went on the record against it because they knew of its health properties as a painkiller. used in colonial days as a painkiller. i say decriminalizing cannabis and not locking people up for a flower that grew here long before white people arrived is the conservative point of view. >> though there is -- the american medical association, in

a report from november 2013, just two months ago, basically warns heavy cannabis use in adolescents causes persistent impairments in neurocognitive performance and iq, and use is associated with increased rates of ang decide, mood and psychotic thought disorders. the law in colorado is you have to be 21 to buy it. in denver, they decriminalized it if you're 18. but there is an issue here of are you encouraging young people to be using this. >> i think those of us who work in addictions and our centers are filled these days with folks struggling with opiate addiction worry about the fallout. what does the cleanup look like. what are the health consequences towards moving toward legalization. in the past 30 or 40 years, we have gained more knowledge about the developing brain, as its to impact on young people.

so i worry that we give all of those gains back. i'm probably the sole guy here set out to defend the war oncra. we all know that hasn't worked. as we move towards this and run towards legalization, we have to be mindful of the potential public health consequences and the fallout for families and quite frankly the impact on the health care delivery system, which we have seen has been really monumental when it comes to alcohol. >> do you think we should be moving towards legalization of mare juan why or some should stay illegal? >> look, i think our experience with the criminal justice system and marijuana has not been successful. at the same time, i worry about legalization not only for those adult users. and, look, no one disputes that legalization will increase use. you see people lined up outside ready to do it. i worry about the message that it sends young people. are we saying to young people, look, it is legal and it is medicine and good for you and do we begin to pay the consequence

nooroz? are we leading them down a false road? so, no, i'm not for legalization. i think it will have a huge impact on young people. and a time when we're trying to find a way to better educate young people, have them do better academically, compete better as a country, he look at this and say, what is the potential gain, people can get high, what is the potential downside, you have a whole bunch of young people who wind up addicted, have a whole bunch of car crashes you didn't have before, and you suffer some public health consequences along the way. the world will not stop spinning on its axis as a result of this, but there is going to be some downside and are we prepared to deal with the downside. >> one of the other upsides of this, according to the state of colorado, they're estimating, they slapped a 25% sales tax on these dispensaries, on top of -- already an existing 2.9% sales tax. they added a 25% tax on this they're estimating they're going to get $67 million in revenue because of this.

$27.5 million of the revenue going to schools. put that piece out there. liz, how do you think about what the doctor just said. >> i would say all of the statistics about, you know, marijuana, reducing the iq and all that kind of thing also happens to people who listen to ted cruz. let's be clear on that. i think when i hear the arguments, a lot of times it sounds like people never started smoking pot before, and we're at this new place. and i know for myself that the strains of pot, what is happening with pot, like i smoked pot in high school, and then i haven't smoked pot for a long time and i smoked pot a couple of years ago and it was really different. to regulate how it is grown, the strains of it, i think regulating any substance and then being able to tax it is a good thing. >> it hasn't worked with alcohol. so when we talk about the potential windfall here, alcohol costs this country $224 billion per year. about $1.90 per drink. we're not getting that back in

tax revenue. >> across country. alcohol has had a huge impact on public health in this country. we use alcohol as a model -- >> the question, for anybody that watches boardwalk empire right now, as -- we allow -- didn't we have -- >> we can't second guess what it looks like. the point is that the notion that taxes will help us clean up the wreckage hasn't shown with alcohol and quite frankly folks who provide addiction services typically under funded nonprofits are struggling to keep up with the demand for services. we look at this and say, what does this mean to what we do. what does this mean to school based education. what does it mean to addition services? some folks can pick up a joint and have no issues with it, one in ten adults will develop an addiction when you talk about adolescents, one in six relatively small percentage, but those folks will suffer consequences and are we

educating them to the potential downside to marijuana. >> the fulcrum which this entire discussion rests upon regarding alcohol since we're not going to ban alcohol again or to that matter tobacco is that the use versus abuse. you're right. for those of us who use these products safely on our homes or private settings, this should not be a concern to the government. but nobody, certainly advocates, don't advance the idea of misusing and abusing the substances and we should have morets and values and civil and criminal pen alties that deter such. >> 21 and over. no one is encouraging or enabling use of young people lawfully. and i think that it is not quite the same as in terms of a public health menace as alcohol has been in the colonial days, the biggest drug problem is the same as today, alcohol. but no one died of a cannabis overdose. and great brownies today, steve. >> alan brought them. >> no, no. starbucks or something. we will -- i want to pick this up. there was an interesting -- some

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so the -- with this dispensaries opening in colorado this week, it sort of reopened the national debate about legalization of marijuana. a lot of national opinion leaders weighed in. i think the column that got the most attention was from david brooks in the new york times. and he was against it. but just to play a clip of -- read a clip of it, healthy societies, governments want to subtly tip the scale to favor temperate prudent self-governing citizenship n those societies,

government subtly encourages the highest pleasures like enjoying the arts or being in nature and discourages less er -- he sort f discovered it wasn't compatible with what he sees as responsible, mature adulthood. i know the argument got mocked a lot, but is there -- there is something to that, in general, about we do set -- we have a whole series of laws that are designed to say, well, we don't want people using crack cocaine, don't want people -- there is something to the argument, isn't there, liz? >> as many david brooks columns proves, david brooks take his life and purports it to be everyone's experience and being someone who works in the arts, and having there be an either/or thing, i would say that's ridiculous and ridiculous also for david brooks, it is very -- it shows his privilege, his privilege should be checked in

this article by saying, i was able to just put it down and do this and that and the other thing. i outgrew it. and all of this stuff. it is, like, you want to know what? lucky you, then. you can't make it both ways. it can be a gateway or it can -- i was lucky enough to be -- >> i think david would benefit from a quick junket and a stop at a coffee shop and a van gogh museum. >> for -- there is -- it gets to the class system in this country, if you grow up privileged in this country, you had your years of experiment, of marijuana or whatever and you're probably not going to get caught, but if we have -- we have two graphs that where telling. use of marijuana by race. it is basically even. now look at this. marijuana arrests and you see when you look at the arrest rate, just the idea of keeping

this legal, you're also sort of supporting and propping up the system that has been grossly unfair in terms of who pays the price for this. >> as a treatment professional, we never advocated incarceration as a solution to what we now know is a brain disease. and clearly we have a long way to go. when it comes to marijuana, it is a tricky question, there aren't good service structures in place to educate people about marijuana use. let like if you're an oxycontin or vicodin user, you go to treatment and other than that, we leave you alone. we need something in the middle that says to the marijuana user, 17, smoking every day, that person won't necessarily qualify for treatment but that person needs something. without intervention, they're going to run into problems. i would say, you know, we should be reinvesting into the treatment system, take all the money we're wasting on incarcerating young black men and put that into the treatment system. that's one thing we all agree on, the war on drugs is a

failure. the law response is wasteful. how do we begin to reprogram some of those dollars into a system that provides support and care for young people who are struggling. >> is your idea -- i'm trying to piece together what it would look like. someone who still wants marijuana to be illegal, doesn't want to see people getting arrested, you pay a civil fine, mandatory -- >> civil fines and education, there is a mind set years ago that mandatory treatment didn't work. it does. we now know that it does. it is not even so much treatment, it is education. we have got a program we take young people who get jammed up on low level marijuana charges and educate them about marijuana use and do goal setting with them. not treatment per se, but it is some intervention along the way. someone tapz them on the shoulder and says this is the road you're on, is this the road you want to be on? sometimes the answer is yes and sometimes no. not enough support for those folks who want to make different choices. as the economy has tightened up,

those kinds of services in communities are less and less and less. i worry about let's run toward legalization, let's lift the ban on this, without having some support in place for young people who struggle. >> much like alcohol, what support systems do we have in place for 17-year-olds drinking every week end not enough. >> i agree. i think it is great that all of us, i'm sure david brooks would agree, incarceration is not a viable option, treatment should be available. i enjoyed the david brooks piece. i think when mccartney feels sergeant pepper, he feels -- i think david brooks doesn't offer any other solutions. one of the greatest kri teekz ef the obama administration was they would not interfere with the california dispensaries and they did exactly the opposite. considering we haven't heard the president use the words, i think the graph you just showed shows

the inherent morality -- >> this president has taken the foot off the gas on the drug war and marijuana more than any president. >> indeed he has. >> much to the chagrin of some. but no doubt he's most progressive president on cannabis since carter. >> we'll pick that point up after the break, about where the politics of this are going at the federal level and some interesting state developments. we'll pick that up and play a clip from obama on this subject right after this. you need a bunch of those to clean this mess. then i'll use a bunch of them. then how is that a bargain? [ sighs ] no, that's too many -- it's not gonna fit! whoa! cascade kitchen and math counselor. here's a solution. one pac of cascade complete cleans tough food better than six pacs of the bargain brand combined. so you can tackle tough messes the first time. that is more like it. how are you with taxes? [ laughs ] [ counselor ] and for even more cleaning power, try cascade platinum.

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♪ for my pain, i want my aleve. ♪ [ male announcer ] look for the easy-open red arthritis cap. [ male announcer ] even more impressive than the research this man has at his disposal is how he puts it to work for his clients. morning. morning. thanks for meeting so early. come on in. [ male announcer ] it's how edward jones makes sense of investing. do you think that marijuana should be legalized? >> i wouldn't go that far. what i think is at this point washington and colorado, you've seen the voters speak on this issue. and as it is, you know, the federal government has a lot to do when it comes to criminal prosecutions. it does not make sense from a prioritization point of view for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has

already said that under state law, that's legal. >> so as a pretty important statement by the president, just over a year ago, right after colorado and washington passed the ballot initiatives to legalize recreational use and sale in their states, the question is, of course, what obama is talking about and what the administration is doing now, it is almost like prosecutorial discretion. telling the doj, you know, look the other way on this one. not an official change of law. what is interesting is there is a house bill right now, it has got a bipartisan list of sponsors, that would basically stop all federal law enforcement action against any state that chooses to legalize marijuana. if you look at the list of sponsors, you go, steve stockman from texas, the most conservative member of the house, is on this, dana rohrabacher, california, justin amosh of michigan, it seems like there is very weird kind of bipartisan coalitions forming on this issue that we -- >> in the 20 years i've been working on this, people used to

try to cast this as a liberal issue. this is now a truly nonpartisan issue. the brookings institution paper, white paper came out this past april from e.j. diane and ga gallston and this is bipartisan and it cuts across all demographics. >> what is the appeal to somebody like steve stockman in texas? is it a states rights issue? >> purely states rights. liberty, personal autonomy, self-preservation. >> if you're high enough, he seems sane. >> less government regulation. >> yeah. >> you that -- rand paul is teaming up, another piece of legislation working its way through right now. i don't know if it will get through, rand paul and pat leahy, democrat from vermont, teamed up, not for legalization, but just to give judges discretion toks ma

discretion. there are things happening at the legislative level federally. do you expect we're going to see in the wake of colorado and washington, do you think that's the next step, federal action? >> i think the next step will be seeing what happens with alaska and oregon. with the course of rand paul, i applaud him for what he and his dad said there ror. interesting question for him on the campaign trail in 2016. >> i think you have to consistently -- decriminalization seems to be the way to go. why should your criminal record be tainted because you smoked pot in an area code versus another area code. >> that language is the way to go. stop saying legalization. you say decriminalization, you're saying let's stop locking people up for something that was a -- >> what it means practically in most of these states, alaska, no fine right now for it. other states it means it is a civil penalty, fined 500 bucks, a thousand bucks, a ticket, something like that.

17 states have gone in that direction. we have news this morning is here in the state of new york, andrew cuomo moving now towards medical marijuana, but looks like the proposal, it is a very sort of conservative version. >> i would suggest this is the political blowback from the west coast. here on the east coast, all of the medical marijuana programs are very limited in scope, like new jersey only allows five retail outlets and connecticut, they'll sell it through pharmacies. here the governor is talking about 20 hospitals. it is a honing of the program but acknowledgement that marijuana is medicine. >> it is a gateway law to much bigger -- >> that's what i wonder. we can think back to the late '90s, started seeing the idea of medical marijuana take off. i think california may have been first. here we are, 18 years later. you look at the momentum on this issue. how it has grown. not just medical now. now states saying you can sell this recreationally. do you -- i know you don't want to see it legalized, do you see

long-term momentum on this that makes it inevitable we'll get there this is a 50-state thing? >> i think there has been a significant change. i think the issues around medical marijuana are somewhat different because it is my belief that this emphasis on smoked pot is medicine, has stymied our research around pharmaceutical grade high cbd low thc medications approved by the fda. i think the california experiment, here in new york, we talk about medical marijuana, i have to hold up the posters from california and say this is coming to a town near you. so i think had that been done differently it might have changed the outcome. my concern here is that we kind of go full scale ahead with this. i hope in states like colorado there are resources to do the kind of evaluation that we need to say, okay, so, look, we did this. what were the consequences. positive or negative? i think there are some potential negative consequences, but i want to make sure we're measuring that and that we don't repeat whatever mistakes we have made, for example, in

california, here in new york, and any mistakes we make in colorado in other states. there is always a downside to policy proposals and downsides to this. the question is, do we have the ability and political will to measure them and do something about them, and i will say, that while this being cast as an ideological shift this is abouts by. there is a ton of money to be made around the legalization of marijuana. we're not losing this fight because alan and i are going toe to toe. this fight is involving because there is a huge amount of money behind this, none of which alan or i -- >> it is money that is shifting. money that will go to -- will be ttached a taxed and regulated in a way. there may be black market losers on this. >> the industrial complex, how much are they fighting against this? that money is getting poured in -- >> they'll lock themselves up. >> right. >> it is a great front in the propaganda war. we grew up being told pot makes you violent and lazy.

what we're going to see now is how much do we talk about liberty, talk about actual freedom and how much do we talk about not locking people up for nonviolent consensual behavior? there will be negative consequences as with any new revelation -- or law. the fact is, we have to stop putting people in jail for this. >> that does seem to be the consensus here, even among most people i heard who want to keep this illegal. they say, look, there are gross disparities here that need to be addressed. i want to thank alan st. pierre with the national organization for the reform of marijuana laws, jeffrey reynolds, long island council on alcoholism and drug depend aens. shifting gears, can you sum up liberalism in four words? one of our guests says he can do it in two. [ male announcer ] this is the story of the dusty basement at 1406 35th street the old dining table at 25th and hoffman. ...and the little room above the strip mall off roble avenue. ♪ this magic moment

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1992, bill clinton was on his way to the white house and there was a lot populism in his

message that fall. >> i have news for the forces of greed and the defenders of the status quo, your time has come and gone. it's time for a change in america. >> after a big republican resurgence in the 1994 midterm elections, clinton famously triangulated and distanced himself from his own party's base. >> the era of big government is over. >> the fast-forward 18 years this past week and it looks like there is no hard feelings on the left about that. bill clinton swearing in new york's progressive mayor bill de blasio this week and if clinton now wants to be more identified with the left, that's probably a sign that liberalism within the democratic party is resurgent. we'll talk about that next. youe rheumatoid arthritis, like me, and you're talking to your rheumatologist about trying or adding a biologic. this is humira, adalimumab. this is humira working to help relieve my pain. this is humira helping me through the twists and turns. this is humira helping to protect my joints

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aired in the '50s, the contestant who could name the tune in the fewest notes won. kathie lee gifford sang the notes on that show for a while. twitter doesn't deal in musical notes, it deals in characters, 140 or less. the words those characters create, and on twitter this week, one of the most fascinating names that developed was the #liberalismin4words. senator ted cruz tweeted, tax more spend more. lots of progressives used it as a chance to define who they are. this democratic consultant defined it as moving america forward together. john fuel saying he needed two notes to name that tune. he needed two words to define liberalism. those two words, prematurely mainstream but used 30 words to

explain it. quoting john, ten years ago i was called a liberal because i supported gay marriage and medical marijuana while opposing the iraq invasion and bush's economic plan. it turns out i was prematurely mainstream. the washington post used the hash tag when he sent out this column this week, he explained moderates need not be afraid of a liberal resurgence. as a result, our entire debate has been dragged in a conservative direction, the center pulled that way too. to create a real center, you need a real left. talk about all of this, i want to bring in al frum, who founded the democratic leadership council which he led for a quarter of a century. the book is the new democrats

and the return to power, about that era. and liz winstead is back. and perry bacon jr. joins us. politics editor at thegrio.com. and john fuguelesang is back. we'll start with you, john, because you inspired this segment in a way. do you see -- you mentioned those three or four issues in your tweet there, you say you and people who sort of share your values felt ahead of your time, looking pack right now. do you feel we're living in a moment that is different than ten years ago where liberalism, there is more wider acceptance, openness to liberalism, is there a liberal resurgence going on or just now there is a whole new set of issues you feel ten years from now you'll be saying i was ahead of my time? >> there isn't progressive talk radio, things are worse than ever for progressive talk on the air. i think the entire history of progressive social values in this country and elsewhere are that which is radical becomes controversial and debated and

acceptable and finally taken for granted from ending slavery to desegregation to medicare. i think if i were to pick a different two words to describe liberalism, i would say eisenhower republican. more and more i find myself going to ike in the 1956 gop platform when talking with our republican friends, big government spending programs -- >> highways. >> highway plan, high taxation rate on the wealthiest of americans, riding the socialist wave of the gi bill. eisenhower was a pro union, pro infrastructure, pro working man republican and i think that's the sort of example we need to shine back and remind our friends that, you know, you want liberalism in four words, lincoln, mlk, jesus, springsteen. >> people know the democratic leadership, the basic history, you started this in 1985, a few months after walter mondale lost 49 states as the democratic nominee.

it began as a group of primarily southern and western democrats. and bill clinton came out of the democratic leadership council and a lot of what the dlc was about was giving people an idea of, hey, what you associate with liberalism, what you -- you associate george mcgovern and walter mondale, you say you wanted to move the party away from that. do you -- did you consider what you did with the dlc? do you consider yourself a liberal and where do you assess liberalism now? >> first of all, i came out of the war on poverty. i consider myself a liberal. what i think we did is really saved the liberalism. you got to remember where we were in the 1980s. democrats suffered the three worst elections in the history of any party in the history of our country. we won a lower percentage of electoral votes this three consecutive election than any party has ever won since the advent of modern parties in 1828. liberalism was about ready to go the way of the whigs. we tried to modernize it,

reconnect it with the main values of the democratic party. opportunity for all. make it a party of upward mobility again. that's why we grew the economy, created 22.5 million new jobs. moved more people out of poverty than any decade but one. restoring john kennedy's civic responsibility, the idea you have to give something back to the country, national service was a big part of it, moving people from welfare to work, but also modernizing government and that's a really important point. liberals, i believe, believe in government. we're not -- we don't want to get rid of government. and clinton you showed the clip of clinton saying you're a big government and -- i hope the era of big ideas isn't over. but what i believe for liberals, government is the agent of our collective wills, the way we help people help themselves and help each other. it is incumbent on us to make

government work. that was one of the main tenets of franklin roosevelt. in the beginning of liberalism. whenever government loses credibility, we are in trouble. the liberal movement is in trouble and we're in trouble as a party. >> one thing and, perry, i kind of wonder about, in terms of how liberals define themselves now, where liberalism is going within the democratic party and as a political force in general is sort of -- it is ironic because we have bill clinton this week at the inauguration of, like, the preeminent liberal in the country right now, one of them, bill de blasio. bill clinton it a complicated legacy. not just a conservative democrat. there were liberal and conservative aspects to his presidency, but he declared the era of big government over, foernled ed forged a real partnership, there are a lot of things i think liberals today look back at and say, we didn't like that part of the clinton years. is liberalism moving in a more

sort of populist direction on economic issues now? is that taking -- >> i think bill clinton was a reaction to the 1980s and ronald reaganism. that's part of why his movement to the center looked that way. versus now you're seeing bill de blasio, a reaction to the at the partyism. 2010 saw this big shift toward conservative economic values and now you're seeing a bit of a backlash toward that. the republicans, sequester a few months ago and you've seen more democrats, more comfortable talking about populist style ideas. what you're seeing is the 2012 obama campaign was pretty much about mitt romney is bad. now you're seeing a real kind of formulation around this idea of inequality being the center of what democrats talk about. this is our new kind of -- if you're going to -- elizabeth warren and bill de blasio will be thought leaders of the party now and they're drive a message of -- the president is saying this in some ways too, inequality is a defining quality of the party.

>> i would like to ask or throw in, we talked about elizabeth warren being the reaction to the tea party and the clinton administration being the reaction to reagan. but what about, like, progressives like me sometimes look at the dlc and say it allowed this corporatization and power to be taken out of hands of, like, real citizens. i feel like one thing that happened in that move was that corporations and the democratic party really, really left -- in a way that was positive in some levels but also kind of negative on some levels. >> i want to get al's response to that. take a break and then we will. ♪ save your coffee from the artificial stuff. ♪ switch to truvia. great tasting, zero-calorie sweetness...

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liz was talking about how the dlc democrats, the democrats of the '90s under bill clinton and this alliance with corporate america and al just to get your response to that. >> first of all, there was a lot of focus on inequality in our message. key principle of the new democrat movement is nobody

works full time year round to support family ought to be poor. in 1993, we passed the expansion and earned income tax credit, with more people out of poverty into the middle class than any program in history. did we have a close relationship with business? we worked with business because you got to grow the economy. the challenge for democrats is to grow the economy and make sure government works. because we want to be the party of upward mobility. when i grew up in indiana, if you wanted to get ahead, you were a democrat, we had to restore that again. and you got to do that by growing jobs in the private sector. paul tsongas once told me the problem with democrats is that we spend so much time worrying about passing out the golden eggs, we forget to worry about the health of the goose. in the 1990s, the challenge was to get the goose healthy again so we would have more to pass out. and to me that's the predicate for what is happening now. >> you get bonus points in the show for write bringing up paul

tsongas. >> a real tension here. hillary clinton gave a speech to the executives of goldman sachs, she talked about the bank bashing, we need to stop doing that. too mup ch of that. we're too populist right now. and that say real debate here. i don't think you can be the candidate of the party of inequality and tell executives of goldman sachs, things are not as -- >> bill and hillary at the bill de blasio inaugural, and bill trying to -- >> that's the rep. carter, mondale and dukakis not getting in and the horrible losses, they may have been more about the charisma of the messengers than the message itself. with the clintons, one thing i noticed watching bill clinton in the '90s and embracing nafta, which i get it, helped him get elected, we don't have president dole as well, but in the repeal of glass stegele, the more he

moved to the right, the more the right hated him, the more the left loved him. his popularity increased as going to away from liberalism which was a way of saying, it is not about ideology, it is about who has the job. >> that's fascinating too. i think we have the stat here somewhere. they look at bill clinton's approval rating among democrats now, like 94 to 4. wouldn't expect him to be unpopular, but, again, given where the democratic party seems to be, where the energy in the democratic party seems to be coming on economic issues and given the complicated legacy -- >> you can argue -- >> ten seconds. >> nafta and a number of the trade agreements and budget policy and investment policy, public investment policy were all about growing the economy and creating 22.5 million new jobs and new opportunity. that's why liberals liked him. >> that is the essential conflict that liberals have right there, you just heard it, bill clinton and his legacy, still arguing about it now.

we'll have plenty of chances in 2016. al frum, author of the new democrats, we'll be right back. i'm randy, and i quit smoking with chantix. as a police officer, i've helped many people in the last 23 years, but i needed help in quitting smoking. [ male announcer ] along with support, chantix varenicline is proven to help people quit smoking. chantix reduced the urge for me to smoke. it actually caught me by surprise. [ male announcer ] some people had changes in behavior, thinking, or mood, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, and suicidal thoughts or actions while taking or after stopping chantix. if you notice any of these, stop chantix and call your doctor right away. tell your doctor about any history of mental-health problems, which could get worse while taking chantix. don't take chantix if you've had a serious allergic or skin reaction to it. if you develop these, stop chantix and see your doctor right away, as some can be life-threatening. tell your doctor if you have a history of heart or blood-vessel problems or if you develop new or worse symptoms. get medical help right away if you have symptoms of a heart attack or stroke. use caution when driving or operating machinery. common side effects include nausea, trouble sleeping, and unusual dreams. i did not know what it was like to be a nonsmoker,

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maybe it seems colder than normal to you this sunday morning. if it does, there is a reason for that. it has not been this cold for decades. in fact, meteorologistes say if you're under the age of 40, you have never seen or felt it this cold before. take a look at this map. this is just how cold it is in the country right now. the deep freeze of the country is locked in, because of something that is called a polar vortex. this is what it looks like right now in indianapolis. the prediction today is the low will be 15 degrees below zero. that is also the predicted low for chicago too. we can see that is a balmy 17 degrees right now. windchills in the purple parts of the country, grand forks looks to be at about 21 below right now, might reach 70 degrees below today. we wonder how it will be in green bay. a playoff game in green bay,

wisconsin, later this afternoon. see how many fans show up and bear that cold. we suggest staying in as much as possible today, watching lots of television, preferably cable news. a suggestion for you. including a freeze of another kind. if you opened up the new york times editorial page on new year's day, you may have encountered a name, a prominently featured name, that one heard of a year earlier, no one heard of well into 2013, a name connected to a man recently as june known own as a mysterious figure who provided the guardian newspaper and the washington post with information with top secret highly classified information about invasive and potentially illegal spying programs the united states government was engaging in. programs with names like prism and boundless enforcement. this mysterious figure revealed himself, edward snowden, and 29

years old, he was a computer systems administrator for booze alan hamilton for the national security agency. in the months that followed, he continued to leak information about america's intelligence gathering operations, explosive secrets, secrets about how the nsa may have broken federal privacy laws, misled the courts overseeing intelligence operations, the director of national intelligence seemed to mislead congress in this exchange with oregon senator ron widen in march of last year. >> does the nsa collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of americans? >> no, sir. >> it does not? >> not wittingly. there are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly. >> and more, much more. the revelations produced by edward snowden didn't just implicate the nsa and questionable domestic spying,

spilled all sorts of secrets about intelligence operations overseas. some involving america's enemies. the presidential panel was formed to review the leaked information and suggest reforms. practically everything we learned about america's surveillance infrastructure this year we learned because edward snowden stole the information and made it public. and to do this, he is paid a real price. he fled the country, to hong kong, then tovading u.s. charge espionage. while there, he continued to leak information, much consternation of american authorities. president has clearly been frustrated by snowden's disclosures. >> because of the manner in which the disclosures took place in dribs and drabs oftentimes shaded in a particular way, and because some of the constraints that we have had in terms of

declassifying information and getting it out there, that that trust in how many safeguards exist and how the programs are run has been diminished. so what is going to be important is to build that back up. >> this past wednesday, new year's derrick the new york times issued their first editorial of the year, about how the obama administration can start rebuilding that trust in the intelligence community by going easier, somewhat easy on edward snowden. it says, quote, considering the enormous value of the information he's revealed, and the abuses he's exposed, mr. snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. time for the united states to offer mr. snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment. got support from high places. ann marie slaughter took to

twitter and wrote, i agree with the new york times on snowden. others have reservations. they feel here is someone who took damaging information, took it public, ran to hostile powers. and the bigger concern is for the precedent it all sets, how such a decision affects country's ability to keep and maintain secrets in the future. unless his position has changed, the person in position to show leniency toward snowden does not seem so inclined n august, the president said he thinks of snowden much more like a fugitive than a hero. >> i don't think mr. snowden was a patriot. mr. snowden has been charged with three felonies. if in fact, he believes that what he did was right, then, like every american citizen, he can come here, appear before the court with a lawyer, and make his case. >> and to discuss what is next in the snowden saga, i want to

bring in michael coen with the century foundation and columnist for the guardian, mirrian elder, perry bacon jr. still here, spencer ackerman is here as well. spencer, i'll start with you. i think we can all acknowledge when it comes to the revelations about domestic surveillance that have gotten so much attention this year that have caused so much debate, we wouldn't know anything about that if it wasn't for edward snowden. make a strong case there was a valuable service provided by that. at the same time, he released the documents that he released got into international -- secrets about international spying. that had nothing to do with domestic surveillance. some people make the case had no business being out there in public at all. he went to a country, russia, with a horrible record on human

rights and free speech and praised the record on human repo records. you think of edward snowden now and the calls for some kind of clemency or some kind of leniency, how do you balance it? >> i think i would be under presumption of inconsistency or lack of candor if i didn't say obviously i support clemency. he was our source. so i can't not. let's get that out of the way. on a personal level, when you look at the totality of what snowden has leaked, it speaks to something that i think the american domestic political establishment often wants to sort of rule out of discussion, which is the question of whether the u.s. has the right and ability to spy on vast amounts of the rest of the world. and there it seems like politicians, journalists and others sort of just want to say, like, let's write that off.

a great deal of the rest of the world is not willing to write that off. i think you do have to factor that in to your assessment of snowden, it is a little bit tricky to -- in parochial to say only the leaks about domestic surveillance are quote/unquote, legitimate leaks. there are open questions about the legitimate scope as a policy decision for the vast amount of information accumulated from all over the world. one other thing, something that also tends to get left out of political discussions is the revelations he's put out about the state of the internet, that the nsa surveils, that the level of collection, how deep it is, how embedded it is with certain companies, sometimes wittingly and oftentimes not, which with you look at people from the tech sector, look at people from the tech business sector, they find tremendously disturbing and are trying to curb. sometimes for their own interests and other times not.

>> fred kaplan who writes about national security for slate, he wrote on friday, basically why edward snowden won't get and shouldn't get any kind of clemency. one thing he said was he looked at -- said among other things, snowden leaked information about the nsa's interception, about nsa e-mail intercepts for intelligence and what is going on inside iran, and he concluded, he said these operations have nothing to do with domestic surveillance or spying on allies, not illegal, improper or immoral. exposing such operations has nothing to do with whistle blowing. sensor w i imagine you have a different take on that. >> the thing is, you can't look at this in a vacuum. the argument he should receive clemency because he revealed information about domestic spying ignores all the other material that he released. the fact is the nsa, the vast majority of what they do is

foreign intelligence signal gathering. that's what they do. small part of that is anti-terrorism. if you look at the leaks, most have to do with legitimate intelligence gathering by the u.s. government. to sound parochial, i hate to be overly parochial, i think snowden worked for the u.s. government, he should face prosecution like anybody else should. i think the idea of giving clemency in advance before knowing what he released, understanding the full scope of the impact of what he's done, it is like saying in some sense that he committed six murders, one in self-defense. >> murder? >> i'm not saying he's not a murderer. but let's say as an example, that if someone committed six murders and one in self-defense, he should have passed the other five. it doesn't work that way. you can get -- i think there is a mitigating circumstance here that he released information that is important to be out

there. the flip side of it is that he also released material that, you know, is legal, that the congress has approved. that tv has a right to conduct intelligence gathering. i think in that sense -- >> one of the issues here is the nsa official who sort of depp tiesed to deal with the snowden issue put out there the idea of maybe having some kind of plea agreement with -- opening some kind of discussions with him about returning him here and i think president obama distanced himself from that idea. but, perry, it seems to me that realistically speaking, if the country were to go down that road, there needs to be substantial cooperation from snowden in terms of exactly how many documents does he have, who has he shared him with, what conversations has he had with the russians. that's what i imagine the government would be looking for. everything i heard from snowden tells me he's not going to want to cooperate at that level. >> we are so far from any kind of clemency happening. those are some of the -- also

the politics of it, for -- in my role and the world is also this impossible, if the president did something like a plea barring within edward snowden, the house talks about impeachment hearings. we're so far away from -- such a strong disagreement among republicans about what -- there is very few republicans that defended it. and then you have -- you have the president himself, you look and listen to what he says, he may change his policy, but he doesn't really sympathize with him at all. you look at his body language, seems to be a visceral dislike of what edward snowed hanss dde. i don't see how maybe january 19th, 2017, he'll think differently. until then i think we're very far from any kind of real discussion of plea gabargains o clemency. >> i want to get miriam in. i want to find out what life is like right now in russia for edward snowden and what will happen when the year long -- the clock is ticking on his year over there.

we'll pick it up after this. ♪

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the u.s. institution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings which the world is not permitted to see somehow legitimizes an illegal affair. these nations including russia, venezuela, bolivia, nicaragua, ecuador, have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless. >> edward snowden in russia a few months ago when he said that that caused a lot of people in the united states to sort of wince a little bit, i think. even people i think sympathetic to him. we know the human rights record of russia. we have olympics coming up, we have been talking about the

human rights record. can you tell us what life has been like and is like for edward snowden in russia now and what we can expect because he's been granted a one-year stay there. is it expected they'll boot him after a year, extend that and stay forever, what is his status over there like? >> i don't think there is a public discussion started about that. but i wouldn't be surprised if they extended his asylum there. putin hasn't given any indication he wants him urgently out of there. as for what life is like for snowden in moscow, we know very little. whatever we do know is leaked through a news source that has incredibly close contact with the security services, so they present this picture that they want us to see, so there has been a snapshot of him outside a supermarket or on a boat. other than that, don't know anything. is he in moscow, outside of moscow, living in a thohotel, d he live with minders.

>> what is it for putin and the government of russia in terms of domestic politics, is this something, like a lingering source of pride for them to have an american almost sort of defector in their country? >> absolutely. the putin administration has lived for years with american criticism about how it treats its own dissenters and human rights advocates. they take pleasure in sheltering someone they see as presenting that challenge to the u.s. government. >> a propaganda victory for them, if nothing else. spencer, you wanted to clarify something we said in the intro. >> we talk about snowden continuing to leak information, that points to a fact not in evidence. snowden said through the people who he's closest to said he doesn't possess these documents anymore. once we have the information, we continue to mine it for stories

in the public interest. this doesn't mean snowden is, like, on tuesday, handing us another document and saying go publish this or something. >> do we know who he shares all this information with and who has had access to all this information? i think he said, in russia he hasn't shared anything. there is open questions about what he was locked in that airport for a month, in hong kong for a few days. is it clear who he had contact with in that time, who he might have shared -- whether it is the chinese government, the russian government? that seems to be one of the questions. >> he said that first he didn't take the documents with him. second, that he didn't have any contact with chinese intelligence, with russian intelligence and so forth. who he actually was in contact with during, like, the sort of blackout periods is an open question. but it kind of conflats whether we're speculating during that time he gave access to his information in exchange for asylum and i don't think there is evidence of that. >> i think one of the issues too that people have who are against the idea of any kind of

clemency, lean genesee, michael, is the idea of he went to work for the contractor for three months. and he's -- he claimed he tried to signal some of his concerns to higher ups. that hasn't, as far as i know, been substantiated yet. there is a suspicion that this -- maybe this would feel different to some people if this had been a career guy, who had been there for 30 years and after 30 years of seeing this and understanding the bureaucracy, raised these concerns, nothing else i can do with it. it is a guy that comes there for three months and has appearance of a guy who went there under false pretenses to get as documents as he could. >> i think that has a lot to do with it. i think the nature of -- i think if he had just stuck to -- stuck to material that related to domestic surveillance, people have -- people should know about that. that stuff should be out there and certainly had has been considered legal by the court and weren't many options for him to put that option out there.

inside the bureaucracy, inside the intelligence community, there is enormous anger about this. because there is a sense that this is undermining legitimate u.s. intelligence gathering activities, and i think that sense of anger and frustration has a big effect on what the president will do in terms of clemency. >> if we can sit here and agree, i think there is consensus there won't be any clemency coming from the obama administration, what happens? what happens? he's in russia. indefinitely. he's talked about maybe wanting to go brazil or something. can he get from russia to brazil? does he come back to the united states at some point and say, fine, i'll face the music and maybe a huge prison term? >> also a question, okay, so president obama is not going to get clemency. there is a question of if you end up changing the nsa programs, changing how they work in the next month or so, which the president signaled he's going to do, the situation

changes a little bit in that i did don't know how much you can keep condemning edward snowden the person while changing the policy. edward snowden has been saying, i won, we're changing, and it seems to me he's right and he has to force the president to change his policy. down the line, does the president's rhetoric about edward snowden change, thinking about this change at all? that's what i would like to see. when the president announces policy changes that were initiated, it makes the case different. it doesn't mean clemency. has to mean some kind of change. >> the president is addressing the domestic changes, but international stuff is out there. >> i wouldn't discount the cynicism of the obama administration in this regard. they're happy to have the politics of it work in such a way that they never, ever praise or even acknowledge that snowden has done this clear public service that i think does merit a full pardon for him, speaking for myself, and yet they'll accept the change occurs, they get to reap all of the credit,

and have none of the blame of actually coming out and admitting, yeah, this is because of edward snowden, we have transformed this debate, we have come to terms with the legitimate public anger about aspects of these programs and we're going to make some recommendations. >> i agree. i agree with that. i think they'll never in any way will they -- their own credibility is at stake here. to admit this -- because of snowden's leaks would be to give credibility of validation to what he did and they don't want to do that. i agree, they'll never do that for that reason also. >> life for an american expat in russia, do we have a general sense, you know what that -- are there good experiences with that or do they generally want to come home off a while? >> i think everybody has a different experience. but snowden certainly isn't living life of, like, a regular expat in russia. he has, like, a lawyer who is an adviser, under constant watch, i would imagine, even though the journalists who have met him there recently said he didn't seem to see any minders.

i can't imagine him chilling in the streets and going to american burger places. >> see if he shows up in sochi, watches some bobsledders or something. i want to thank perry bacon, spencer ackerman, michael coen and miriam elder. still ahead, politics meets pop culture. hey kevin...still eating chalk for heartburn? yeah... try new alka seltzer fruit chews. they work fast on heartburn and taste awesome. these are good. told ya! i'm feeling better already. [ male announcer ] new alka seltzer fruits chews. enjoy the relief! [ male announcer ] rocky had no idea why dawn was gone for so long... ...but he'd wait for her forever, and would always be there with the biggest welcome home. for a love this strong, dawn only feeds him iams. with 2x the meat of other leading brands... ...to help keep rocky's body

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he's getting a lot of stuff done. >> the president of the united states is a house of cards fan and he was asking reed hastings for a sneak peek at the second season. that show isn't the only golden globe nominee the president considers must watch tv. we'll discuss the president's favorite shows and their influence on politics next. on t the modest first floor bedroom in tallinn, estonia and the southbound bus barreling down i-95. ♪ this magic moment it is the story of where every great idea begins. and of those who believed they had the power to do more. dell is honored to be part of some of the world's great stories. that began much the same way ours did. in a little dorm room -- 2713. ♪ this magic moment ♪ we are the thinkers. the job jugglers. the up all-nighters. and the ones who turn ideas into action. we've made our passions our life's work.

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tonight is the fourth season debut of the show that has absolutely nothing to do with washington. "downton abbey" or downtown abbey but my producers love it and it inspired best graphic of 2013. since that was about the government shutdown, i think we're safe leaving it here. something else all three of the shows have in common, in addition to critical acclaim, they also boast the president of the united states as an avid viewer. this according to a new york times piece by michael shearer. his favorite shows may not have been a surprise to those who closely observe the guest list at the state dinner for british prime minister david cameron. >> i sat opposite him at the same table at a dinner at the white house, which was extraordinary. i was sure i would be sitting next to the toilets. but i was put on the table opposite the president and i asked him when he watched the show, he said, well, saturday afternoon, i tell michelle, i'm going into my office to work.

and i bring out the tv and watch "homeland." >> that's damian lewis, not the only actor to attend that dinner. also downton abbey's mcgovern. overall it seems like the president doesn't spend a lot of time watching come disunless he's with his family. breaking bad was also on the list. what is the president's taste in television tell us about him. do the shows he watch have any influence on him and what kind of impact they have on us in the political culture of our country? for that, i want to introduce our panel, we have culture writer with "the new york times," david isikoff, liz winstead, john fuguelesang is

back, and we have michael shearer, the white house correspondent for the new york times who wrote the article this week about the president's edgy tv picks. welcome to all of you. michael in washington, i'll start with you. i'm reading through your list, obviously there was an error in your reporting because up with steve kornacki was not on the president's list, clearly an oversight. but i'll let that one go for right now. you write in this article, it is obviously difficult to discern what any of this really means or tells us about the president's psyche or politics or anything like that. you wrote the most sort of notable entry on the list might be homeland. >> well, yeah. i think the thing that struck me, some of these have been known in the past. you start assembling the whole list, the thing that struck me was the point you made earlier, which is he -- this guy goes into the oval office, comes back at night, dealing with war, terrorism, you know, economic calamity, all sorts of problems that you got to assume for me if it were me come back to that

night, i would be watching real housewives or something that would make me laugh a little bit. but instead, he seems to gravitate towards shows that depict the kind of same weighty, heavy issues that he's dealing with all day. >> and what do you think? do you get any sense -- what does that tell you about the president? >> well, i mean, look, i think part of it, it has to do with the fact that, you know, we have known sort of for a long time this is a guy who sort of thinks seriously about issues. he's not a light hearted guy. he's not a back slapper like president bush seemed to be with people. there are moments, sure, he likes sports and will get together with friends and watch a basketball game or football game. but this is a fullndamentally serious guy. when he watches a show like the wire, that sort of depicts the kind of america that is sort of

the underbelly of america, that he's thinking in part about, you know, what can i do to address some of these things. >> that's an interesting point. some of the shows, house of cards is -- homeland has lots of political themes, but we can go back, talk about presidents and -- the story that jumps out at me there was a made for tv movie called the day after, it depicted a nuclear attack in lawrence, kansas. and jason robards is in it. ronald reagan as president watched this. hawkish ronald reagan, to fight the communists, the soviet union, he recorded in his diary after watching the day after, columbus day, in the morning at camp david, i ran the tape and movie abc is running november 20th, the day after in which lawrence, kansas, is wiped out in a nuclear war with russia. it is powerfully done. very effective and left me greatly depressed.

my own reaction, we have to do all we can to have a deterrent and see there is never a nuclear war. this was if not the turning point, this was sort of a key turning point in turning reagan's approach more towards negotiation and sort of openness with the soviet union and television having a real impact. >> gorbachev coming to power too. >> an opening, sure, sure. >> this was an era when tv was a kind of monoculture, you only had the three networks to choose from and that everybody was probably watching the same thing each night. president obama's choices speak more to a fragmented era, binge viewing, he can actually -- who should have a busier schedule, fuller plate than the president of the united states? he should have no time to watch television theoretically, but he's finding ways to sneak in viewing, sneak in programming by watching multiple episodes at the same time. it is a huge win for the netflix business model, the hulu

business model. >> i don't think it is grim considering the man's job. i would come home and unwind to heavy dramas all the time. when i saw a list of the tv shows, the most terrifying thing sy realized according to okay cupid, the president is my perfect romantic -- i can have a beer and watch a three hour arthur miller -- kick back. >> in terms of when you look at this list of the shows, does anything jump out at you and say anything about who obama is? >> it is weird if he said i love say yes to the dress. what i think it says more is dramas are better than the comedies on air right now. and the comedies that are great are also comedy dramas, like girls and stuff. so is it that it says something about him gravitating towards dark dramas or is it that best

shows on television right now are pretty dark dramas? >> golden age of one hour drama, but also means the guy has taste. you can love george w. bush, but his favorite drama was the weather channel. >> interesting point too you look at past presidents. michael, you wrote about this a little bit, george w. bush liked the biography channel or a & e's biography, ronald reagan wanted to be on family ties, the quintessential -- they wouldn't let him on. he wanted to be on. this is a break from past presidents, isn't it? >> yeah. i think it is. i think, you know, the point about there is probably more ability for a president to watch tv now than before because he can watch it on his ipad, he can, you know, probably stream it to a bunch of devices and he's not locked into the schedules that previous presidents were. i do think, you know, one of the things that is interesting is to wonder and i don't think we know this, but to wonder how much he

does draw inspiration, how much of a connection there is between public policy and what he watches as, you know, as you mentioned with the reagan moment. they're very closed at this white house. i asked a dozen different ways to give me better insight into that question and i don't think we know. but there is something about the kind of realness of the shows these days, they're not -- they're not kind of fantasies. they're rooted in kind of the real problems and there is this cross pollen nation between real life and the shows. you have to assume when he goes to sleep at night, there is part of his mind that is kind of mixing that entertainment and reality. >> i tell you, i love most of the shows on the list too. if i see a family ties repeat on tv, i'm going to watch it. >> you're such a child of the '80s. you're so funny. >> what they used to do in the '80s, they had real theme songs for sitcoms.

they don't do that anymore. i want to thank michael shear s. we'll be back with the head of the television department. the show's name rhymes with sad ten. and the actor from that show will join us next. hey kevin...still eating chalk for heartburn? yeah... try new alka seltzer fruit chews. they work fast on heartburn and taste awesome. these are good. told ya! i'm feeling better already. [ male announcer ] new alka seltzer fruits chews. enjoy the relief! to roll out a perfectly flaky crust that's made from scratch. or mix vegetables with all white meat chicken and homemade gravy. but marie callender's does. just sit down and savor. marie callender's. it's time to savor.

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now listen to me, duck. i have an associate that met with, uh, an unfortunate accident. while he's been incapacitated, somebody's been paying him cash. now, is this your doing? aflac? now, if i met with some such accident, would aflac pay me? ♪ nice. this is your stop. [ male announcer ] find out what aflac can do for you and your family... aflac? [ male announcer ] ...at aflac.com. have a seat. >> no, that's okay. >> i think you should have a seat. >> okay. >> now, i think you know that we like to think of this place as a family. and there are certain ways a family behaves. >> what did she say? you have to hear my side of it. >> your side of what? >> nothing. >> you're always up to something, aren't you?

>> "mad men," one of president obama's favorite shows, been on his list for a while too. in 2008, a dvd was sitting on a side table on the campaign plane. the folks at sterling cooper worked on advertising for the nixon campaign. been a while. joining us now from los angeles, may not be up to something, but certainly up very, very early, harry crane himself or the actor who plays him. really appreciate you taking the time to join us this morning. the first thing i got to ask you as an actor, knowing that you are performing in the president of the united states is watching, how does that make you feel? is there awareness of that on your part? >> there is, you know, not awareness on the day, obviously, but we have been fortunate enough to have some very

exciting people tell us they watch the show and it has been kind of an odd ride in that way. but i'm not sure any of them top hearing that president obama had it on his campaign plane that dvd story was sort of -- became legend on set and became very exciting for us. >> and i imagine too, one of the things that in this new york times article we're talking about, apparently his interest in the show or part of why he likes the show so much is that it looks at the sexual politics of the 1960s, and he says he can understand his grandmother who was a middle aged woman in the 1960s and the struggle she was facing, what she was facing from society and culture from that time by -- through peggy. it seems like your show has some value. not just for the president, but for a lot of people to help understand what the 1960s were like. >> it seems to resonate with

people, obviously in very different i was. people say they can't watch the show because it reminds them of a time that was awful and upsetting because socially it was awful and upsetting. but it does also seem to give people a little bit of insight into what maybe their relatives were going through, parents or grandparents. and it has that resonance for me as well. >> i think he watches it because it makes him feel better about smoking, rich. >> that's also true. we have driven a lot of people way off the cliff in that regard. >> we're talking about the influence that television could have on politicians and maybe in shaping their views. the flip side of it too, when politicians use television shows as part of their political messaging, famous example of this, this happens all the time, famous example, we can play some clips here, 1992, from the show called murphy brown, one of the top sitcoms in the country, murphy brown decided was going

to have -- was going to be a single mother, have a child out of wedlock. and dan quayle took issue with this and family values became the big issue for the republicans and george bush sr. hmmself weighing in. playing two clips to remind you of what that was like in 1992. >> doesn't help matters when primetime tv has murphy brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid professional women, mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice. >> it is time, high time that we change america. time to turn our attention to pressing challenges, like how to give a pink slip to our slow growth economy, it is growing but far too slow, how to make our families more like the waltons and a little bit less like the simpsons. >> the waltons -- >> i also want to say i was waxing back on the days when

single women were rich and successful. those were good times when that happened. >> the show is still on the eric the simpsons or the waltons. >> the simpsons is still out there. but, dave, there is also that strain we can talk that we can talk about, hollywood influencing presidents, but hollywood, television, the entertainment industry, it's an easy punching bag for politicians too. >> absolutely. i could just say two words, "duck dynasty," on this program and think of the fistfights that will potentially erupt. i mean, certainly presidents have figured out that pop culture can be a kind of proxy war to get your values across. and it's almost a safe place to exert that, rather than to come out, say exactly what you feel, let the pop culture have that fight for you. >> every time the president releases his favorite songs on his ipod, i know we're up for some new demographic roulette. but there's a lot of positives to come from this. now, especially when you have your right-wing troll friends say, barack obama hates white people, i can say, barack obama

is a huge fan of "downton abbey." you don't watch that unless you really love white people. >> let's talk about the excitement on the set, of knowing that the president of the united states is a fan, is there anything that you or the people you work with, when you realize that not just president obama, but other sort of prominent people watch the show, is there any sort of thing that you hope that they get from this show? >> i mean, for me, i know that there's probably, maybe a greater truth to the show that our boss, matt miner, would hope for people to get. for me, i would hope for them to be entertained. and i hope president obama thinks i'm funny. that's all i've got. that's my only hope. >> well, i'm not president obama, but i do think your character is very funny. >> thank you, thank you. >> i want to thank "mad men's" rich summer for getting up very early on the west coast.

coming up, what should we know today. our answers from the panel, they're right after this. ♪ no need to chuck, donate or burn them ♪ ♪ just pack them in our flat rate box ♪ ♪ we'll come to your door and return them ♪ ♪ gifts you bought but never gave away ♪ ♪ or said you liked but thought were cheesy ♪ ♪ you don't even need to leave your house ♪ ♪ we'll come and take them, easy-peasy ♪ [ female announcer ] no one returns the holidays like the u.s. postal service. with improved priority mail flat rate, just print a label, schedule a pickup, and return those gifts at a same low flat rate. [ male announcer ] we all deserve a good night's sleep. thankfully, there's zzzquil. it's not for colds, it's not for pain, it's just for sleep. ♪ because sleep is a beautiful thing™. ♪ zzzquil. the non-habit forming sleep-aid from the makers of nyquil®.

all right. it's time to find out what our guests think we should know. we'll start with you, john. >> well, i have been spending the last couple of months working on a documentary called "the american dream." and i recently was in a prison in florida talking with a guy who got 20 years for his first nonviolent drug offense, under the mandatory minimum sentencing laws. and i say that because this is the week that florida's own congressman, trey redell, returns to congress from his rehab. of course, he escaped jail on a technicality, because technically, he's white. there's already been a huge contention amongst the gop. we can look for some real splits. connie mac has suggested that he might run against trey for his seat. so i think we'll see some real congressional fireworks. it's also hilarious that this guy's favorite band is public enemy, proving the way he listens to the lyrics the way chris christie listens to springfield lyrics.

>> not going to drop any public enemy lyrics on this show. you know, weave alluded to the return of "downton abbey," which is happening tonight, and it's going to be an explosion of serialized appointment tv from here on out. next weekend, you've got "girls" coming back, hbo's "true detecti detectives" on showtime. if you own a dvr, buy three more and set one up in every room in the house. >> liz? >> tomorrow in louisiana, a horrible panel will be ruling on the texas reproductive rights law. edith jones in particular is a woman you need to know. she's a horrible judge, has horrible records on race and women's quality. and my dear, dear friend, rcht t. rybak, the mayor of minneapolis, had a heart attack yesterday and i want to say, recover, get better, you're awesome. >> i'll second the that. and the new orleans saints won last night, keeping alive my dream of doing a super bowl

tailgating shows with the patriots, saints, me, melissa, and meadowlands in about a month. we'll see about that. i want to thank all of our guests, john, scott, dave, and liz. thank you for getting up and thank you for joining us. we'll be back next weekend, saturday and sunday at 8:00 eastern time, and a newly minted "way too early" host, thomas roberts will be up. coming up next is melissa harris-perry. on and cheese diet? this is the creamy chicken corn chowder. i mean, look at it. so indulgent. did i tell you i am on the... [ both ] chicken pot pie diet! me too! [ male announcer ] so indulgent, you'll never believe they're light. 100-calorie progresso light soups. [ coughs ] i've got a big date, but my sinuses are acting up. it's time for advil cold and sinus. [ male announcer ] truth is that won't relieve all your symptoms. hmm? [ male announcer ] new alka seltzer plus-d relieves more symptoms than any other behind the counter liquid gel. thanks for the tip.

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